Amazon's New Domains May Not Come Easy

NEW YORK ( TheStreet) - Amazon ( AMZN) sells a lot of books. So many, in fact, the online retailing giant has asked for permission to create a few new Internet domains just for itself. It wants Web addresses with the suffixes ".book". ".read" and ".author", but the publishing industry is putting up a fight.

Barnes & Noble ( BKS), whose ticker symbol is BKS (Books), was one of the companies to offer up opposition to the move. A pair of industry groups are fighting it as well. The Author's Guild and the Association of American Publishers are fighting the idea that Amazon, as a single entity, could buy and control these new domains - and ace out any and all of the competition, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit group, is the entity in charge of assigning domain names. The group controls the use of the well known suffixes, including ".com", ".net" and ".org". Amazon is taking advantage of ICANN's plans, as the group is in the process of developing a plan to expand the number of available domains.

We'll be hearing a lot more about all of this in the next few weeks. The first of ICANN's new domains are expected to begin their online life late next month.